Mackinac Island Historic District

A former national park turned state park where motor vehicles have been banned since 1898, Mackinac Island preserves both a Revolutionary War-era fort and a slice of 19th-century travel that most of America left behind more than a century ago.

British forces built Fort Mackinac in 1780, relocating from the more vulnerable Fort Michilimackinac on the mainland during the American Revolution to take advantage of the island's commanding position over the strategic straits between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The fort changed hands repeatedly in the following decades: British troops captured it in a surprise attack in July 1812, one of the first British victories of the War of 1812, and the United States did not regain control until the war's end in 1815.

In 1875, Congress designated Mackinac Island the second National Park in the United States, after Yellowstone, but the federal government found the small island difficult to manage from Washington and transferred it to the state of Michigan in 1895, making it one of the country's first state parks. The Grand Hotel, opened in 1887 with a porch stretching roughly 660 feet, became the island's signature landmark and a magnet for wealthy Gilded Age tourists.

In 1898, as automobiles began appearing and frightening the island's horses on its narrow streets, Mackinac Island banned motor vehicles altogether, a restriction that remains in effect to this day. The island's frozen-in-time character later made it a natural filming location for the 1980 film 'Somewhere in Time,' shot largely at the Grand Hotel, and its combination of fort, hotel, and horse-drawn transportation continues to draw visitors seeking a deliberately old-fashioned experience.